Pakistani Taliban claims NYC car bomb

PTIMay 3, 2010, 10.24am IST

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's Taliban chief promised attacks on major U.S. cities in a video apparently dated early April and released following the weekend's car bomb attempt in New York City, a monitoring group said Monday.

It followed reports of another video in which the group apparently tried to take credit for that attempted strike.

U.S. authorities have played down the potential connection between the Pakistani militant network and the car bomb attempt in New York's Times Square, saying the group does not have the global infrastructure to carry out such a strike. However, the Pakistani Taliban could expand their reach through their alliances with al-Qaida and other groups.

The latest video is about nine minutes long and features Hakimullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban chief, according to IntelCenter, a U.S.-based group that monitors militant media.

Mehsud does not specifically mention New York, but says he is speaking on April 4 of this year, and promises that, ``God willing, very soon in some days or a month's time, the Muslim (community) will see the fruits of most successful attacks of our fedayeen in USA.''

``Fedayeen'' usually refers to suicide bombers, which the car bomb attempt in New York did not involve.

Mehsud also refutes earlier Pakistani and American claims that he died in a U.S. missile strike in January, a belief Pakistani intelligence officials recently revised.

The video follows a second, shorter clip in which the group appears to claim responsibility for the attempted car bomb, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, another monitoring organization.

In the 1 minute, 11 second video allegedly released by the Pakistani Taliban, the militant group says the attack is revenge for the death of its leader, Baitullah Mehsud, and the recent slaying of al-Qaida in Iraq leaders Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri, who were killed by U.S. and Iraqi troops last month north of Baghdad.

SITE, a U.S.-based terrorist tracking organization, first uncovered the video on YouTube. The tape, which later appeared to have been removed from the website, makes no specific reference to the attack in New York, nor does it mention that the location or that it was a car bomb.

New York City's police commissioner said there's no evidence of a Taliban link to the failed car bomb.

In a copy of the tape provided by SITE, an unidentified voice speaking in Urdu, the primary language in Pakistan, says the group takes ``full responsibility for the RECENT ATTACK IN THE USA.'' The speaker says it comes in response to American ``interference and terrorism in Muslim Countries, especially in Pakistan for (the) Lalmasjid operation,'' a reference to the Pakistani army's 2007 storming of the Red Mosque in Islamabad where militants were holed up inside.